Thread by @TalkerTeacher

Two years ago I started this stacked little thread as way to document the strange, unsettling, gaslighting groupthink that has unfolded within #bced, #bcpoli leadership & most #bcmedia.

BC started pandemic in 2020 being NYT lauded & has currently plummeted to backwater status.

https://twitter.com/TalkerTeacher/status/1496321171067109383

Like many teachers, I started Sept 2020 fully aware I could not keep students safe in school & that anyone who thought we could was either ignorant of way schools function or they prioritized economy over student & #bced staff health, willing to ridicule legitimate concerns.

What I didn’t expect was resistance to science to come from intelligent voices at every level.

In fact, few #bced, #bcpoli, union leaders have been willing to have courage to speak up & say some simple words that would have undoubtedly prevented infection & #LongCovid in many.

People following global scientists & studies waited patiently, then less than patiently, for province’s elite to say:

1. #Covid19 is aerosolized
2. Schools are vectors of transmission
3. Wear good masks
4. Upgrade ventilation & filters
5. Educate your staffs

But they refuse.

So here we are after two years, profoundly disappointed in failings of health & #bced systems, our echelons of “leftist” @bcndp now too entrenched in their stance to do anything but rationalize that “a certain number” of deaths are acceptable so we can pretend pandemic is over.

The cognitive dissonance many of us feel is palpable & constantly swirling within us. We know at a deep & basic human level our leaders are wrong.

That it is gutter selfish to abandon simple mitigations that inconvenience us when they protect the most vulnerable among us. #bced

So as #Omicron was peaking schools were given a week to “enhance” safety measures, I felt hopeful we would have increased #bced protections.

What did that end up being? Procedures to keep schools open AS staff & students got sick, not ensuring measures to PREVENT infection.

That gutted me. Every #bced level from ModE on down was complicit in the process, not to prevent infection, but instead prevent closures once we got infected.

Now undoubtedly staff & students have #LongCovid who wouldn’t have had it otherwise, had the focus been on prevention.

So I went to see someone to spur my thinking as I think that’s always a good idea for growth & self-awareness.

What did I discover? A LOT of ignorance.

And I think health professionals I saw are pretty representative of willfully ignorant intellectuals of BC elite.#bced #bcpoli

First, my doctor asked if a lot of #bced colleagues were stressed, going on leave & quitting or if I was going to be a trend setter. Implying that caring for my health & well-being was somehow attached to a larger semi-organized strategy or group movement of mass exodus.😳

My doctor said people were tired of pandemic so we were just going to get back to normal.

He says this from his highly controlled, masked environment. I had to insist on an in-person appt as he only does zoom.

He had zero ability to empathize or see his hypocrisy & privilege.

But that’s nothing compared to the therapist I saw, who suggested that I go back to teaching because students wouldn’t be as safe with someone else teaching my class. And I could be really important for imparting my principled values onto the next generation. Guilt therapy much?

But it started with me (before protections were removed) in the waiting room while unmasked office personnel walked up and down the halls. All the office staff was unmasked behind plexiglass but they were also walking around.

When I got into the office the therapist unmasked & asked if I was comfortable with it. I said no, unless he had rapid tested that day. He had not and he asked me if people did that. His windows did not open he had a hepa so I asked about it. He had no idea, so we stayed masked.

That irked him to no end, I could tell. He kept dramatically lifting his mask to take numerous sips of water throughout our sessions. The second session he also unmasked as soon as we stepped into the office, and I looked at him until he said, “Oh right” and masked up again.

He asked again if I was comfortable with him unmasking and again I asked him if he had rapid tested that day. He had not and asked, “Who does that?” I said I had just gotten a request from a neighbour for one of my rapid tests as she was going to visit some babies. Pretty common.

Then he started to talk about how I needed to change the way I looked at my safety because we had almost reached herd immunity anyhow as so many people have had third shot.

Apparently children aren’t people in his world?

He referenced a European meta study that found no difference between lockdown & non-lockdown stats but couldn’t cite it.

He talked about how we all take risks. He rides his bike knowing if he gets hit it will be game over but he takes the risk because benefit outweighs risk.

He said most people had already gotten infected by #COVID19 & so weren’t afraid of getting infected anymore. And infections were much milder in #Omicron anyhow. And being in a classroom was clearly my happy place so how could I change thinking to ignore the rest & get back to it?

He talked about avoiding a victim mentality. I responded by explaining the lack of worker protections for teachers (lack of protections, fighting for masks, excluded from ability to work from home where possible, lack of ventilation & filtration, etc.) compared to others. #bced

He called me opinionated & suggested, twice, that I did not suffer fools gladly.

Now I ask you, if I were a man, would he have used terms with such negative connotations?

He ended up debating me, more interested in denying my lived experience than actually listening to it.

But the rub in all this is that my experience is not actually unique, although I am unsure if the upper echelons in other jurisdictions are quite so staunch in their blind support of pandemic health policies.

It may be that in this regard, BC is actually magically exceptional.

So I’m sharing this deeply personal attempt at trying to work through the cognitive dissonance of living through a pandemic in BC. Feeling so conflicted as the leaders at all levels are trying to convince me how I should feel, but knowing that what they ask of me lessens us all.

When the therapist talked about lessening #Covid19, I agreed & mentioned numbers mean nothing anymore due to collapsed testing but wastewater numbers were decreasing. It was, however, more important for me that deaths were at zero.

His response? But comorbidities, Seriously.